Wednesday, August 1, 2012

An Improbable Color Selection

When I moved into our house in 2006 I had a vision for the dining room. It would be just the perfect shade of milk chocolate and purple. To make a long story short, the vision was a fail. Four paint jobs later I gave up completely on the perfect shade of purple walls and painted the walls black. Enter new vision.

But this post is not about the dining room - it is about the $70.00 can of paint I bought that was to be the ultimate purple paint (number 4) for the dining room but actually turned out to be practically the same color as purple paint number 2. That was when I permanently gave up on the purple vision.

But what to do with the purple paint??????

Well I had this entryway, stairwell and upstairs hallway that was coated in a really BAD venetian plaster job. The color was pretty - kind of a bronzey butterscotch color - but as I said it wasn't the best application and there were chipped (white) and dirty places all over the stairwell. I didn't have any idea what to do to fix it and didn't find any practical way to remove it.

I had a brainstorm. I would paint over it with the very expensive purple paint and then stain it with Old Masters Gel Stain (dark walnut).

Was I worried that it would be dark? No. It was already dark. The hallway would be dark if it were bright white. That's just the nature of hallways in the middle of Tudor style houses in Michigan. I've never been afraid of dark colors and I wasn't going to get afraid then.

It turned out beautifully. It looks a little like leather. I have wanted to post about it ever since I started blogging - but it is so difficult to get a good (not to mention interesting) picture. I was going to wait until I learned better photography techniques - but that isn't happening so I just took some and did the best I could with Pic Monkey! Now at least I can go to the Mission Impossible: All About Color party.

I wasn't able to edit all the color/tones to be identical. However they are all close to the real color - and it does change color in the light.

What do you think? It's easier to live with than you might imagine. It's just so pretty.

15 comments:

It DOES have a leathery look! I have a lot of darkness int eh center of my house too and I know how hard it is to get decent pictures...frustrating! But I can see the color....sort of eggplanty?....I like it!

I like this very much. Great save! I admire both your persistence and your recognition that your plan just wasn't working!

My mother, in her incipient Alzheimer's stage, painted the dining room, the family room, the hall and the guest bathroom an intense turquoise--a very deep turquoise. One large wall(open beam high ceilings) in the Jack and Jill bathroom was a deep, morning glory purple that must have needed scaffolding and several coats.

It took my breath away for the first 102 times I entered the house. And I like color--clearly I grew up with it, since the deep turquoise replaced a medium turquoise in the family room area. The outside of the house was grey concrete block alternating with, again, turquoise and an almost taxi-yellow door.

I love this color! It looks terrific....and I'm so jealous that you found a Tudor. We looked high and low, to no avail...all the Tudors in our neighborhood were way out of our price range. (Of course, two or three in our price range have recently come on the market since we moved in. Of course.)

I love the color it looks very elegant and a little mysterious as you come up the stairs . . . like what are you going to find around the next corner. Besides the color your art work is great.

Now, your backyard. I have not visited for a while because I missed this post about your recycled window pergola . . . it is amazing, how very creative. I absolutely love it!

Isn't it fun playing with your home and using your talents and creativity to make it show your personality. I really feel sorry for women that are cooped up in apartments with restrictions to painting and changing design.

I love your home it is deliciously amazing and Beautiful! Have a great week, Connie :)

Hi Karen, I'm delighted that you like my re-do. The ceiling was fun to paint and the molding is not bad, for a pennies on the dollar version of crown molding. Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful week, Connie :)

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This blog is about stuff I make, stuff I paint, stuff I do, and cake. I like cake. I've pretty much been a maker of stuff all my life. I often wonder if any of the prized, hand-crafted, gifts I gave my friends while I was growing up still exist. Maybe in a museum somewhere? If only I'd had a blog back then...

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